Voltaire's attacks brought rejoinders from Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in 1769 and from Dr. Johnson in the preface to his edition, 1765. In fact, admiration for Shakespeare was a powerful factor in forcing the rejection of rules and standards of French criticism. Johnson's Preface finds fault with Shakespeare's neglect of poetic justice and dwells at length on the faults in plots and diction, but Johnson defends the violation of the unities, and his praise is a discriminating summary of the merits that the eighteenth century had found in Shakespeare. It is praise that is likely to endure.
Within another generation, however, reverence for Shakespeare had increased to an intensity that made Johnson's admiration seem feeble and niggardly. This transformation was due to many causes, but in the main it was a part of the vast changes in European literature known as the Romantic movement. This resulted in a rejection of the rules and models of neo-classicism, a new interest in the literature and manners of the Middle Ages, a conception of poetry as the expression of individuality, attention to the individual man in all orders of society, a fresh concern for external nature, an emphasis on the emotions rather than mere reason, a desire for wonder and mystery, and an exaltation of natural instincts and intuitions as opposed to general truths or social conventions. In each of these particulars, Shakespeare seemed the complete fulfilment of the new tendencies—which indeed his growing influence had undoubtedly encouraged. More than Spenser or Appreciative CriticismMilton or the old ballads, he was the inspiration and guide for new endeavors in literature. It seemed to the new age of critics and poets that they had rediscovered him, and they hastened to raise him from neglect to the throne of omniscience. He was no longer a wayward genius, he was the model from whom art and wisdom were to be learned.
This new criticism was esthetic and appreciative. It did not try to balance Shakespeare's merits and faults, or to test him by codes of arts or morals. It recognized him as supreme, and its discipleship was devoted to reverent interpretation and enthusiastic admiration. Believing in the importance of the poetic imagination in the affairs of men, it found in him a gospel and an example for its creed. Its delightful task was to find new beauties and to search out the hiding-places that revealed the god of its idolatry. If the genius of the master-poet was the source of art and wisdom, the personality of the critic gained a new refulgence through its service of reflecting the rays of glory. The interest in the study of individual characters had resulted, even in Johnson's day, in some notable interpretive essays, as Maurice Morgann's on Falstaff (1777). In the next generation, Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt in England, and Schlegel and Goethe in Germany, brought the keenest intelligence and most sympathetic taste to a criticism that aspired to reveal the full range and height of Shakespeare's creative faculty.
The results of this criticism may be more specifically summarized. (1) It viewed the individual characters of the plays as if they were real persons, analyzing their motives and elaborating or repainting their portraits, as in the analyses of Hamlet by Goethe and Coleridge, or in the brilliant sketches of Hazlitt. The few hundred lines spoken by a leading character have thus been expanded by the impressions made on successive critics into volumes of biography. (2) Shakespeare's works were studied as a whole in an effort to study the development of his art and mind. Schlegel and Coleridge gave a unity to the phenomena of the thirty-seven plays that had not been recognized hitherto; but they and their followers naturally tended to make of their author a sort of nineteenth-century romanticist. (3) Exalting the services of poetry and the creative imagination, they viewed Shakespeare's exhibition of human nature and his incidental wisdom as profound, consistent, and immensely valuable for the human race. Hence they were ever seeking in his work for a philosophy, a synthetic ethics, and making the widest applications of his words to conduct. Believing that he could do no wrong, they inevitably came to attribute to him ideas and morals that were of their own creation.
The defects of this criticism are most apparent in critics like Ulrici and Gervinus who carry its methods to extremes. Personal, fanciful, unhistorical, idolatrous, it is yet a tremendous tribute and an amazing The Nineteenth Centuryrecord of the sway that Shakespeare has exerted on the human mind. The writings of no other man have been studied so intimately by so many sympathetic readers, or have excited such different impressions. Throughout the nineteenth century this appreciative criticism has continued, and Shakespeare has been interpreted through the personality of many critics, German and American, as well as British, more recently through the delicate sensibility of Professor Dowden, and the penetrating reflection of Professor A. C. Bradley.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Shakespearean criticism has become too varied for a brief survey. Textual and esthetic criticism both continue. The biography has been established on a sound basis of fact by Halliwell-Phillipps and Sidney Lee; and still new facts reward patient investigators of the legal and court documents, almost the only records preserved that can possibly bear on Shakespeare's life. Special studies of all sorts have been numerous, as to his reading, religion, folk-lore, and so on. More significant in its effect on our general view have been the efforts of historical criticism. As our knowledge of Elizabethan literature, drama, theater, have increased, it has been possible to see Shakespeare in relation to his time and environment. The study of Shakespeare as a sixteenth-century dramatist aims not merely at a better appreciation of his work, but also to explain his development and to account for some of the qualities of his achievement. Its attitude is that of the scientific historian examining the records of any great human activity, and trying to understand its causes, results, and meaning. Somewhat allied to this has been technical dramatic criticism, which is uniting knowledge of the Elizabethan theater with interest in drama as a peculiar form, and thereby studying Shakespeare as a dramatist rather than as a poet or philosopher. In fact, Shakespeare is no longer merely man, poet, dramatist, philosopher, or genius. Jonson's tribute, Dryden's summary, Johnson's judicial essay, or Coleridge's admiring studies, all seem hopelessly inadequate to express the range of his dominion. He has become the source of the most various and extensive interests, a continent that ever expands its fields for exploration, an epoch that ever extends the years of its duration, a race that never dies, though its progeny ever multiplies.
It is in the nineteenth century that Shakespeare's dominance becomes international. Four of his plays were acted at Dresden and elsewhere early in the seventeenth century, but there seems to have been no literary acquaintance with the plays in Germany until about the middle of the eighteenth century, when two poor translations of Julius Cæsar and Romeo and Juliet appeared, and J. C. Gottsched severely criticized Shakespeare's art. In 1759, in a journal, "Litteraturbriefe," Lessing began a warm defense of Shakespeare and declared his superiority to Racine and Corneille. His Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767) went far in directing the change of taste from French classicism In Germanyand in establishing Shakespeare in German thought as the greatest of poets, whether ancient or modern. A prose translation was begun by Wieland in 1762 and completed by Eschenburg in 1789. What is perhaps the best translation of Shakespeare into any foreign tongue was begun in 1797 by A. W. von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, two leaders of German romanticism, and finally completed in 1853. Schlegel's lectures on Shakespeare and the Drama were delivered in Vienna in 1808, and present both the romanticist's idolizing of Shakespeare and a new kind of esthetic criticism destined to exercise great influence on Coleridge and the English critics. Meanwhile Goethe was adapting Romeo and Juliet for the Weimar theater (1801) and Schiller was arranging Macbeth for presentation at Stuttgart (1801). Goethe indeed was, throughout his life, an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, and his works are full of discriminating criticism, of which perhaps the most famous passage is the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister. Since Lessing and Herder, German poetry and drama have felt Shakespeare's influence, and in both textual and esthetic criticism, Germany has rivaled England and the United States. Delius and Schmidt, whose Shakespeare-Lexicon (1874) is one of the great monuments of Shakespeare scholarship, are perhaps first among textual students; since 1865 the German Shakespeare Society has published yearly contributions of all kinds to Shakespeare criticism, and especially an excellent bibliography. On the stage Shakespeare has been constantly acted since the beginning of the century, and has engaged the services of some of the greatest actors, as Schroeder, the two Devrients, and Barnay. At present a large number of his plays are performed annually, in the smaller as well as the larger cities, and more frequently than in Britain or America. Twenty-six of the plays were acted in 1911, Othello leading with 158 performances. For the years 1909, 1910, 1911, Hamlet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice have been the favorites, with The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer-Night's Dream the most popular of the comedies. For over a century Shakespeare has profoundly influenced German life and letters. Rarely, if ever, has a great people been so powerfully affected by a writer in a foreign tongue.
In France, during the eighteenth century, Shakespeare's reputation was both aided and hindered by Voltaire. Though there are a few earlier notices of the English dramatist, Voltaire, after his visit to England, 1720-1729, was virtually the first to win attention for Shakespeare. He admired Shakespeare, acknowledged his influence, but deplored his deficiencies in taste and art, "le Corneille de Londres, grand fou d'ailleurs, mais il a des morceaux admirables." Voltaire's criticism provoked replies in England and a defense from Diderot, who shared with Lessing the effort to emancipate the drama from some of its neo-classical restriction. Translations of twelve plays by La Place (1745-1748) and all of the plays by Le Tourneur In France(1776-1782) gave an opportunity for greater acquaintance with his work. A version of Hamlet by Ducis was acted at Paris in 1769. But even at the end of the century, French literary opinion, though partly won by Le Tourneur's praise of Shakespeare, still sympathized with Voltaire, now engaged in an attack on Englishmen and their favorite. His last opinion (1778) declares, "Shakespeare est un sauvage avec des étincelles de génie qui brillent dans une nuit horrible."
The nineteenth century saw a reaction from this criticism, indicated by the praise of Madame de Staël (De la Litterature, 1804), by Guizot's essay accompanying a revision of Le Tourneur's translation (1821), and later in the appreciation of Mézières's Shakespeare ses Œuvres et ses Critiques (1860), in several translations, and in Victor Hugo's eulogy (1869). The best of the translations is by the poet's son, François Victor Hugo in prose (1859-1866). On the Paris stage, the leading English actors have appeared from time to time, and French versions of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello have made a permanent place. M. Jusserand is the chief authority for the history of Shakespeare in France and an ambassador of peace between the conflicting literary tastes of the two nations.
In Italy, Holland, Russia, Poland, and Hungary, during the nineteenth century, many of the plays have been regularly acted, and from Italy have come great actors and actresses, as Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi. Complete translations have been published in these countries and in Bohemian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and Spanish; and separate plays have been translated and acted in many other languages including those of India, Japan, and China.